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Today in Linus Pauling: March 3

Wrote these Manuscripts:Experiments on Production of Antiserum to Pneumococcus Polysaccharide No. 3, March 3, 1942.

Petition to the Senate of the United States for the Redress of a Grievance, March 3, 1966.

Can Vitamins Help Control Heart Disease and Strokes?, March 3, 1993.

Gave these Speeches:The Type of Bond in the Hydrogen Halides and the Halogen Halides, Second Lecture, Berkeley Lectures — Resonance of a Molecule among Several Lewis Electronic Structures, University of California, Berkeley, March 3, 1932.

The Magnetic Properties and Structures of Hemoglobin and Related Substances, Sigma Xi, No Location, March 3, 1936.

Modern Views of the Structure of Atoms and Molecules, Santa Barbara, California, March 3, 1950.

The Scientific Revolution, Centennial Lecture Series: “The Revolutionary Age, The Challenge to Man,” University of California, Irvine, March 3, 1968.

Vitamin C and the Common Cold and The Close-Packed-Spheron Model of Atomic Nuclei, No Location, March 3, 1971.

“We cannot imagine what it is but I feel that either ourselves or our children will someday stand before the world as a specimen of a high standard of intelligence.”

-Herman Pauling, letter to Belle Pauling, 1905.

The documentary record of Linus Pauling’s early years is, unfortunately, rather thin. Much of what we know about Pauling’s life before high school is based either on letters exchanged by his parents or through Pauling’s own recollections conveyed in interviews to various biographers over the latter decades of his life.

There does exist, however, at least one highly-illustrative shred of semi-neutral evidence of the young Pauling’s precociousness — a letter to the editor of The (Portland) Oregonian, written in May 1910 by Pauling’s father, Herman. Titled “Reading for 9-Year-Old Boy,” the letter requests suggestions for books that might stimulate a grade-schooler “deeply interested in ancient history” and “prematurely developed [in his] inclinations.” Here is a scan of that published letter:

Herman W. Pauling's letter to the Oregonian, published May 13, 1910. Annotations by Linus Pauling.

Raise your hand if you had read both Darwin and the Bible by the fourth grade.

The background to Herman’s request is provided by biographer Thomas Hager, who detailed this account of young Linus’s “unusual intelligence.”

When Linus was five, Herman commented on the boy’s talkativeness and ‘earnest manner’ when he prattled to his elders. By age six he had already been advanced to the second grade of the little school in Condon and had learned how to express himself clearly through the written word….By age eight he had developed an interest in ancient civilizations, and Herman began teaching him a few words of Latin. And he showed some early interest in science. When the projector lens from Condon’s one nickelodeon broke, Linus salvaged a piece and played for days focusing sunlight into a burning point. At age nine he was already reading Darwin and delighting his little sisters with miniature volcanoes he made by pushing together some sweepings in the backyard, adding some calcium carbide from a bicycle lamp, pouring water, and lighting the acetylene gas that was given off. The reaction was a common one used to provide light for bicyclists; Linus’s variation on the theme was original.

In their response to Herman’s request, the editors of The Oregonian suggest a reading list that might seem a stretch by contemporary standards — Plutarch’s Lives, Herodotus, Thomas Arnold’s The History of Rome, all books that one might now expect to find on a college history survey syllabus.

The Oregonian's response to Herman Pauling's request, May 13, 1910.

We do not know to what extent Herman Pauling followed up on The Oregonian‘s suggestions — for what it’s worth, none of the three recommended books remains extant in the Pauling Personal Library. What is clear, however, is that the strong desire for knowledge that Herman helped to cultivate in his only son remained a defining element of Linus Pauling’s personality throughout his 93 years.

Herman was clearly proud of his children, each of whom he wanted to become, as he put it in another letter to Belle, “an asset to the human race.” Sadly, he was never to know the extent to which his son would fulfill that ambition. One of the great tragedies of Linus Pauling’s life was his father’s sudden death, of a perforated ulcer, on June 11, 1910, less than one month after writing to the state’s newspaper for advice about a bright boy.

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[…] himself to large amounts of stress in the process. After settling into their new environment, he wrote a letter to the Portland Oregonian in May of 1910, requesting advice for his son. Young Linus Pauling was […]

[…] the boy’s interest in science was beginning to flower. The previous year Herman had written a letter to the Portland Oregonian newspaper indicating that his son was a “great reader” keenly interested in ancient […]